1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image processing apparatus, a control method for the image forming processing, and a storage medium.
2. Description of the Related Art
In image processing apparatuses, high productivity is desirable. Environment responsiveness such as electric power saving is becoming important in addition to the high productivity. For example, in the case of performing a binding processing by using a sheet processing apparatus such as a case binding machine and a tape binding machine, which are often used for image processing apparatuses for a print on demand (POD) system, it is necessary to perform warming-up to prepare a glue, a tape, and the like. Since a long time is sometimes required for the preparation, the preparation is one of the factors for lowering the productivity.
For example, in the case of executing a case binding print job by a sheet processing apparatus, it is necessary to perform warming-up of a glue melting unit for melting the glue. When power supply to the glue melting unit is maintained in the case of executing another job in which the case binding processing is not performed after the execution of the case binding job, power consumption is increased.
However, when the power supply to the glue melting unit is cut off immediately after the completion of execution of a case binding job, the temperature of the glue melting unit is lowered and warming-up of the glue melting unit needs to be performed again to execute a subsequent case binding job. Therefore, a long time is required for performing the warming-up of the glue melting unit when the case binding print jobs are intermittently input.
It may be possible to execute a plurality of print jobs, which need case binding processing to be performed, all at once by changing the order of print jobs to be executed. However, it is difficult to keep the original execution order when the order of jobs to be executed is changed, and execution of a job in which the case binding is not performed is postponed. Particularly, in the printing field such as POD, it is not preferable to carelessly shuffle the jobs since each of the jobs has its printing due date.
There has been discussed, in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2006-199475, a technique for increasing job processing efficiency, in which warming-up is performed early by estimating a time to be elapsed until a sheet processing operation of a job is started based on the number of sheets to be printed in the job.
More specifically, upon input of the number of sheets to be printed in the job, a time required for warming-up is subtracted from a time to be elapsed from printing of the sheets corresponding to the number of sheets to be printed until the start of a post-processing operation. The warming-up is started at a timing obtained by the subtraction. By employing such technique, it is possible to perform the warming-up only when the job requiring the warming-up is to be executed without performing the warming-up for the jobs other than the job requiring the warming-up.
However, in the conventional technique, it is necessary for the image processing apparatus to recognize the number of sheets to be printed in the job, to calculate the time to be elapsed until the start of sheet processing, thereby raising the needs for complicated processing. For example, since the number of sheets to be printed is changed depending on the number of pages and a printing layout of the job, it is necessary to perform raster image processing (RIP) of all of the pages of the job, to accurately recognize the number of sheets to be printed in the job.
Also, a method in which a user inputs the number of sheets to be printed for each of jobs may be possible. However, such a process is very labor intensive, and the user would be required to know the number of sheets to be printed that are output by the execution of the job. Furthermore, since the user can input an erroneous number of sheets to be printed, the method lacks accurateness.